{"id":56611,"date":"2024-06-26T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T15:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=56611"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:44","slug":"sarah-mcnamara-on-ybor-city-crucible-of-the-latina-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/sarah-mcnamara-on-ybor-city-crucible-of-the-latina-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah McNamara on \u201cYbor City: Crucible of the Latina South\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah McNamara\u2019s new book Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South<\/em><\/a> is a deeply personal history of the Florida city where she grew up. In this episode of Writing Latinos, we talk about her Cuban grandmother, the family storyteller and archivist of Ybor City\u2019s Latino community. When McNamara was a little girl, her grandma brought her to the museum where she was a docent, vowing to tell stories about Ybor City that ran counter to the official version of local history told by the museum\u2019s curators. The stories McNamara learned focused on a radical political activism in Ybor City that\u2019s very different than the stories we often hear about Miami\u2019s conservative exile community. Women led the charge and inspired McNamara to write the story of how Ybor City became one of the first places where a pan-ethnic Latino identity was forged. She places in an unfamiliar context some of the most familiar figures of Latino history: Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed, Luisa Capetillo, Luisa Moreno, and Fidel Castro, all of whom spent time in Ybor City before they made names for themselves. What we learn about them is both new and surprising. Ybor City<\/em>, published by The University of North Carolina Press, is McNamara\u2019s first book. Her next book is about Latino electoral politics in Florida.<\/p>\n

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